The Lighthouse, by Christopher Parker
A book that seems well promoted in social media at the moment, The Lighthouse offers good engagement to keep the pages turning. It did have more of a Young Adult feeling than a grown-up read for me, with spooky but gentle ghosts, a sad but not gruesome mystery, young protagonists and a (pretty chaste) doe-eyed romance.
Continue reading “The Lighthouse – book review”Iris and Me, by Philippa Werry
This is a terrific story about a tenacious woman who, in the 1930s, leaves New Zealand with no support and very little cash and reports on a war in China. It’s intelligent young adult fiction (though I don’t qualify as either and I loved it). Despite speaking no Chinese language, having no official capacity, being slightly lame and needing a walking stick, Iris gets right to the front-line and writes on the conditions she finds there. This is Iris Wilkinson, pen name Robin Hyde, who was a New Zealand poet, journalist and novelist. I knew her from her books; I read The Godwits Fly recently, but I had no idea she was such an audacious traveller as well.
Continue reading “Iris and Me – book review”The four finalists of the Jan Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction.
It is such a privilege to be on this year’s Ockham shortlist, along with Michael Bennett, Catherine Chidgey and Monty Soutar. It’s a very happy period, these weeks between the shortlist and the announcement of the winner, which will be on May 17th at the Auckland Writers’ Festival. A girl can dream!
Here is the Ockham Sampler, where you get to read an extract from each of the books for free. If you like what you read, please head to your nearest bookshop and buy the book. Not sure about the others, but I’m saving for a gold frock.
Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton
Well, I didn’t see that one coming. What an ending! Bloody hell, Eleanor Catton first lulls us with a nice gardening collective and then goes full-on James Bond.
So much has been written about Birnam Wood already and all of it is full of praise: dark and brilliant (the Guardian), an astounding analysis of human psychology (the Spinoff), an explosive climate-change thriller (FT), phenomenal and utterly gripping, electric, spectacular, a complex and absorbing web of human relationships (Various). And yes to all that.
Continue reading “Birnam Wood – book review”Kawai, by Monty Soutar
We seem to have been waiting such a long time for this book. Kāwai is truly groundbreaking and I hope that it clears the way for more stories in this historical and cultural setting. So what’s the big deal with Kāwai and why has it been so phenomenally successful?
Firstly, no one has published such an epic saga of Māori life before, and the timing now is impeccable. It seems Soutar has been coming all his life to be writing this story now (for such a time as this), when not only does he have the necessary contacts and learning and experience, but there is an audience with a huge appetite for stories and discussions of our history and people. Just look at how the bestsellers lists over the past three or four years have been dominated by things Māori. We’re open and primed for a big, readable Māori story that would have been unthinkable twenty, even ten years ago. And here it is and it’s fascinating.
Continue reading “Kāwai – book review”The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey
Last book of the year and an absolute favourite. I devoured this in a couple of long sessions after Christmas and it’s a splendid read, just perfect to take on holiday (or mooch in the hammock at home ignoring things, as I did). I hand on heart recommend this to anyone. It’s such a great yarn. Very rural kiwi.
Continue reading “The Axeman’s Carnival – book review”Through the Lonseome Dark, by Paddy Richardson
It’s the early 1900s and Pansy is living poor on the West Coast in Blackball, which apparently is a charming town these days. Pansy’s a smart kid. Smarter than her pa. Today you’d hope this would be a positive thing and she would be given every opportunity to make use of her talents, to be educated and offered the chances that would help a small town girl rise to fulfill her potential. You’d hope that someone would notice the bruising on her face and not turn away.
Continue reading “Through the Lonesome Dark–book review”The Fish, by Lloyd Jones
This is a family story where an off-the-rails daughter living in a caravan gives birth to a fish. Our narrator (first person, never named, so I’ll call him the Fish’s uncle) is pretty clear about this. The thing being held up to be admired is an oddity, slightly revolting, not quite human. A thing with a gulping lips, a rubbery mouth. With gills, and an overwhelming fishy smell. What kind of creature the baby is we never really learn and this makes the whole story intensely curious. Although the Fish’s uncle refers to ‘it’ and ‘the Fish’ or ‘our Fish’ throughout, the others give it a masculine pronoun and the Fish is named after his grandfather, Colin Montgomery. The Fish grows up and goes to school, leaves school, goes to work in the family junk yard, goes on holiday. He may be a boy with some kind of horrendous congenital disability or the horror may belong to the view of the Fish’s uncle but we, the readers, are unwillingly (for me, anyway) made complicit in the relegation of the Fish to ‘freak’. The Fish is part of the family and loved even, with a kind of every-family-has-its-cross-to bear embarrassment, but an object who is given no internal life of his own. We meet him as onlookers – never communicate directly with him, never try to understand.
Continue reading “The Fish – book review”A Fish in the Swim of the World, by Ben Brown
Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Korokī, Ngāti Paoa) is a story teller. His stories are philosophical and luminous and funny and intellectual and they plunge from one mood to the other without missing a beat. I spent a week in a van driving around Taranaki with him recently and our conversations changed me, though it’s hard to say exactly how.
Continue reading “A Fish in the Swim of the World – book review”Under a Big Sky, by Tim Saunders
I’ve been back with Tim and his family for another farm holiday and it’s been great. I spent about a week in the book this time, not much has changed since I met them all in This Farming Life, but I think I will always enjoy the shepherds dragging astonished sheep from their pens for a morning shear and the way the magpies gargle with laughter when his dad tells a joke, and the big bird, Kāhu, who clutches the new day in rust coloured talons. These are the author’s expressions, of course. Who else could write so evocatively about daily life on a farm?
Continue reading “Under a Big Sky–book review”
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